


1953

by easystreets



Category: The Border Trilogy - Cormac McCarthy
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:06:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27792757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easystreets/pseuds/easystreets
Summary: Five years after leaving home, John Grady Cole comes back after receiving a letter from his mother.
Relationships: John Grady Cole & His Mother, John Grady Cole & Lacey Rawlins
Comments: 6
Kudos: 2





	1953

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Project7723](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project7723/gifts).



> Thank you SO much for the prompt, Project7723! I loved writing this. It brought so much light to my days and I'm so happy to have created something for my favorite book.

He was eating breakfast when the letter came. The hotel owner’s daughter brought it to him and he did not open it but instead ran his fingers alongside the smooth ivory ridges of the envelope. He stuck a finger into his coffee cup and watched the blue cursive on the back bloom into dirty explosions. Halfway through his second cup of coffee he dug a fingernail under the glue pasted onto the envelope and then suddenly drew it back as if the words contained inside had burnt his hands. The girl took his plate and handed him a paper bill for both his breakfast and his stay and only then did he dare to open it.

Are you thinkin of staying another night. The girl asked. She watched as he ran his fingers through the cursive penned onto the page. He seemed to be translating it as if it were in some infinitesimal print instead of steady even cursive and he was lost in thought until a dish in the kitchen broke and he jolted his head upwards.

No. He said. No. I have business in San Angelo. 

***

The boy’s name was James Grady Collins but he did not know that for she did not tell him in the letter. There had not been letters before and he supposed there would not be again but he often thought about her, staring at cheap imitations of baroque paintings in bars or wandering into jewelry stores with her on his mind. She had left when he was just a boy and yet she had imprinted herself into his life in a way that was so big and mountainous he had not ever attempted to carve her out of it for it seemed unimaginable.

He rode on upwards towards San Angelo. The roads were packed and dry and the dust caught in his eyes. The horse under him was not Redbo but rather a new one who was not accustomed to rough terrain, had grown used to the untrampled grounds of highway ditches and so they traveled slowly, one hand on the reins and the other holding his shirt over his mouth. 

Finally he came to where they had once lived. All of them. His forebears leading back nearly a hundred years had tended the land and built up fence posts. They had staked the ground out and cleared out large stretches of desert and claimed it as their own. The Comanche who had ran wild and free through it for centuries before and their sole surviving children who lived haunted on land. Now it was nobody’s. It was a dry stretch of survey. The old Rawlins’ place that Jed Rawlins had bought in ‘28 had no lights in the windows and the front door had been taken off its hinges. On the porch was the corpse of a mangled cat with its insides glowing atomically red in the sunset.

He did not dare look at what had become of his home. He rode with his eyes closed and did not open them until he was past the survey line.

***

They met in a café and the boy clung tight to her side. He burrowed his head into her dress and she did not shy away as he remembered her doing with him. Instead her hand met his temple and she softly brushed through his hair.

Im glad to see you, she said. She looked much older from what he remembered and he was ashamed to have not recognized her and the boy at first, both drinking from steaming cups of tea in the corner of the café with their heads ducked down at the table, laughing as if they were sharing in some clandestine secret that he could not or have ever comprehended.

Yeah. He stared down at his boots. He supposed he had grown as well. He had spent most of the past five years crisscrossing over the country. There had been good times when he had found work and rode gentle stretches of spring lands and picked up radio stations first try with just a wire between his teeth. However he had spent many nights shivering in irrigation ditches and more than once strange men had charged him and pulled knives out of their boots for no other reason than he looked like he could take a beating. 

This is James, she said. The boy peeked out from behind his mother. 

Oh. He had not been in the company of a child for some time. The last had probably been Blevins.

What do you say, she said. There was no dry detachment in her voice and the sweetness sounded almost foreign to him.

It’s nice to, the boy began. She nudged him gently and waited with patient eyes. Outside the traffic lulled and he could hear his horse whinny along with the echoes of car horns.

It’s nice to meet you. The boy said. He ducked back behind her.

I hope you can come for dinner Sunday. 

What time. He asked. 

Six. But come anytime before, she said. Youre welcome to.

Alright. He said. She had not made any mention of him staying the night and he did not have much money left from the last stint he’d spent on a Ukrainian family’s farm before they too had decided to sell the land to a businessman all the way from Seattle. Part of him wondered if she cared for him. The other half was too far gone to tell, lost in some desert-red abyss where the sun burnt even the most scarred skin and the wind swept men to sleep.

***

He did not sleep outdoors. Instead he wandered the streets. There were men playing music and he stopped to listen until one shook a tin cup emblazoned with silvery roses at him.

Money?

Against his better judgment he dropped a nickel into the cup. 

Thank you cowboy.

He nodded and walked further down. There was a small cluster of bars near the café where they had met earlier and although he did not drink unless offered he ventured into one in search of some sort of intangible warmth that seemed to be emanating from the grey-green windows. Inside clusters of silent and yet stoic older men sat. Some who had gone to the war and had the misfortune of making it back moved with hitches in their legs or mechanical gaits. He grabbed at his own mangled thigh self-consciously and was about to slip into a booth when someone clapped him on the back.

Bud.

Instinctively he slipped a hand into his right boot and turned quickly with his hands white against the blade.

Bud. Lacey’s face was older yet definitely still his. He frowned at John Grady from above. Its just me.

His cheeks were hot and he could feel his breath echoing throughout his ribcage. The hum of conversation had halted and handfuls of the old men had turned to look at him with their grey eyes trained on his back.

I didnt expect you here. John finally said. Lacey studied him unmoving as if he were part of some sort of museum of relics from days gone past that would never be again.

I didnt expect you either. No word for five years. Halfthought you were dead. He led him to the bar and silently watched as he clumsily sat down. You look like you could use a drink cousin.

You work here.

Yeah. He lithely grabbed a small glass into which he poured in a dark amber beer but not before sliding a napkin across the countertop for the drink to rest on. It was practiced and did not resemble the Lacey Rawlins he had once known and yet was exactly something he had idly imagined Rawlins doing when he was riding along endless stretches of grey road or staring up at the ceiling of boarding houses. How long have you been in town?

Just today.

He watched Lacey’s scarred hands as he moved. No wedding ring and he was certain Lacey was not seeing a girl for what had happened in Mexico had made himself solitary and lonesome. Women stared at him like some sort of strange hurt animal and he supposed they did Rawlins as well especially since the entire town was liable to know. He held a cigarette between his teeth as he refilled a glass of gin and then turned towards John again.

You plannin to stay. Tobacco spilt onto the counter and he swore.

I dont know. He wondered if Lacey knew about his mother and her new family. My mother invited me to town.

No. He didn’t know then. Lacey stared intently at him as if he were some sort of all-seeing and omniscient prophet instead of an overgrown boy with his nails still stubbornly stuck in a lifestyle that had been theirs together once.

She has a boy now. James she said his name was.

I thought she was too old for babyhavin. Lacey said bluntly.

New husband too. John snickered and allowed a grin to spread across his marred cheeks. Lacey was just like old times and it was a strange sort of comfort. He had grown older and yet the same soft eyes. There was innocence in him that had survived like desert flowers or some sort of miraculous fruit tree in a starved land. 

Son of a gun. Lacey shook his head. You got somewhere to sleep tonight? Although they had not seen each other for what seemed forever somehow Lacey still knew how he was wont to act when he was bone tired and lost. He felt the invisible weight on his shoulders lift and smiled his crooked smile once again.

She didnt offern I didnt ask. He took a sip of his beer. It burnt in his throat and so he stirred it instead. 

Well Im offering. 

He nodded and stared out the fogged windows at the blurry streets and streams of yellow light. Yes. If you dont mind. Lacey was all he had left of home. But even Lacey was not the same anymore. He’d grown taller and slim and was no longer loudmouthed but rather quiet and downtrodden almost with his limbs sticking close to his sides. The wind hummed quiet outside and he watched the man with guitar hold out his rose cup to people until it was closing time and Rawlins was stacking the chairs onto the tables.

***

He lived in a small apartment just off the main street. There was a radio set playing soft music when they entered and a mess of various books and sheaths of paper on the counter. In the kitchen there was one of the barn cats from the Rawlins place drinking warm milk out of a saucer and a candle flickering that was halfmelted onto the countertop. It looked very much like he had made a home for himself, a niche in this dirty and dusked city that felt like walking into the Rawlins hayloft or his bedroom at the Grady ranch. 

Shit. Rawlins hummed. He unbuttoned his shirt and stretched. The scars were still there but they were faint and crookedly white against the warmness of his skin. Only John could have guessed what they were or known how it felt to drench your boots in blood. Im plain out exhausted.

Yeah. John said and did not undress. He had not been seriously injured in the past five years but he’d grown gaunt and there were bruises from a bar fight still blossoming across his ribs in an inky black entanglement. You want me to blow out the lamp?

Rawlins stared at him slowly. I know what its like.

What whats like. He said.

You dont gotta act like youre the only one hurt is all. He kicked his workboots into the corner. I waited five years no word for you to come back. You actin like its some sort of hardship to write once a month hell even once a year would have been fine.

He sighed in the cool lamplight. I aint ever quit you. 

You left and you never come back. Rawlins laid down and suddenly in the bed he looked very small. Almost like some sort of petulant child rather than a grown adult that was nearly two years John’s senior and had liked to boast about it in their schooldays. Thats as good as quit.

Im sorry. 

You caint just be sorry. He blew out the kerosene lamp and the room darkened. You gotta keep your word. Aint that what your granddaddy always said?

What? The room was dark and still he was afraid to undress. There was something lurking in the shadows. 

A good man always keeps his word. Youre a good man. He could hear the tiredness in Rawlins voice. One that did not come from missed sleep but rather constant and antagonizing fear weighing down on a man’s back. He knew this all too well.

Look. John said. He dug his jeans off and unbuttoned his shirt finally. It was a sorry thing. First my granddaddy and then the girl and Abuela. He had not thought about the girl in months but every time he saw the slight back of an old woman hunched over in some sustained market he immediately thought of Abuela leant over countertops rolling out dough or cradling him as a young boy with skinned knees and a sorry heart.

And I got a daddy who drank too much and I went to the same Mexico you did. Rawlins turned uncomfortably in the bed. I think you gotta hold onto what good you got and quit pushin it away.

Reluctantly John crawled into the bed. They had done this often as children and as lanky teenagers but now his feet reached the edge and the blanket was too short and the ceiling was dripping water that he hadn’t noticed till now. 

Bud? He asked. There was a certain sort of fear in his voice that he could tangibly feel in the air.

Yeah. Rawlins said. 

I dont know if theres any good in this world left for me. 

***

He dreams of Jimmy Blevins.

There is always a knife pressed against the small of someone’s back in these dreams. Tongues thin and wet like stewed bay leaves. Shoes drawing up dust storms on gravel ground outside a rancheros place waiting to hear the final gunshot. Waiting to hear the gurgled gasp of a man swallowing his own cherry blood. The sound of a little boy who christened himself after a goddamn radio preacher’s blood dripping down his emaciated white throat, tiny hands scrabbling in hemoglobin-wet sand that clumps under his dirty fingernails.

Blevins mouth is moving in these dreams. His lips beg in desperate semi-circles. No sound but wind rushing past John’s ears like a bullet in the wind and horses hooves stamping out the secrets ingrained in the sand. How many men have died here? How many children have bled out into the sand? Blevins screams silently in these dreams, mouth open wide like a Comanche war cry.

***

In others there is silence. Wind rushing past his bare ribs and the quiet faint sound of a funeral choir. Lightning slicing sharp through the sky and his boots are filled to the brim with liquid. He sloshes around to try and get closer to the boy, to get him to just shut up shut up shut up would you please be quiet goddamn but he can’t move. He’s stuck in the sand and everything around him is sinking. The boy is screaming so loud he can’t hear anything but he can see the urgency in the boy’s eyes. It is that of a hunted animal. Of a starved saint. Of his own.

It is only then he looks down and finds that the liquid in his boots is blood. And it is not his. It is not his.

***

Jesus son of God.

What. 

You were screamin. So loud. Rawlins stared over him curiously like some sort of apprentice surgeon with his hands bent and crooked like white cranes. There was light streaming in from outside and the sound of feet scuffing against concrete and his head hurt viciously. Had a nightmare.

Yeah. 

Sayin about Blevins this Blevins that. 

He reached through the end table for a cigarette and pulled the sheets high over his chest until he almost looked like a corpse in a funeral home. There was no light so he had to shuffle again in the end table for a match.

Do you ever get to feelin sorry about him? Rawlins said. He had already dressed and yet leant back on the bed with his workboots spilling dust on the floor and the bedcovers as if nothing in the world mattered as much as what he was saying.

What do you mean sorry.

Sorry it happened. Rawlins voice grew soft. He was just a boy. And thinking back I could have maybe done something. 

John grabbed his arm gently and felt his pulse run through steady. Dont say that. Dont think back.

I dont know why I had to be so hard on him. He watched as Lacey rubbed at his eyes. He was just a boy. 

John didn’t know either but he understood that this was a wound their hearts would have to carry as long as they stayed beating. I think about him some. I dont know what there is I can do.

They stayed silent a long time until the streets grew quiet once more. The radio hummed and he shut his eyes and did not sleep.

***

I think. He said that day at lunch. I think there just isnt anything you can do about these things.

Rawlins drew a long sip in from his coke. I think you can.

John crumpled the straw wrappers into a ball and stared at the scratched initials of lovers on the Formica table. He wondered if there ever could have been something like that for him. He wondered if Alejandra had been his first and only chance and if her initials were being carved into some diner’s table in Mexico by a man he had never met. Finally he took in a deep breath.

Blevins was just a kid but so were we. And we aint ever put a gun to his head.

I suppose so. Rawlins said. He seemed to believe what John Grady had said. It was a small comfort even if he himself did not believe his own words. His shoulders slumped. I guess he sort of had it coming. Already been dogbit and runnin his mouth all the damn time. He shook his head. It would of happened anyhow.

Yeah. He flipped through his billfold. Usually he paid in labour or ate for small enough prices he could pay with a single coin. Rawlins pushed his hand away from the check wordlessly. Thanks, he said.

Dont sweat it. He smiled. Im glad to have you back, partner.

You want to come to dinner? John asked.

I got work at seven. Rawlins said. Tell your mother I say hello though. And youre welcome back at my place. He got up and gathered his jacket almost colliding into a waiter as he did so. Effortlessly as if he were used to the constant ongoings of the city he moved away from the waiter. See ya. 

He walked out of the diner with his shoulders high and John stirred his cup of coffee in the warm yellow sun. He placed the blackened spoon onto a napkin and watched the coffee blossom through.

***

Good to see you, she said again.

Yes. The husband stood behind her and behind him stood the boy like some out of order matryoshka doll. He was tall in the doorframe and had to bend to enter the home. Im glad as well.

This is James, she said. The husband nodded at him. And you met Junior yesterday.

The home was beautiful and closely resembled the theatre he had seen her perform in once. There were framed photographs of her and the man and dark velvet curtains. The house itself was nearly on the outskirts of San Angelo and he had underestimated the time it would take to get there on horseback. There was already food hot on the table when they came into the dining room and he felt like a boy who had come late after being called in for dinner. Shameful and sweating at the dinner table while everyone was already sat nicely.

Bless this meal, the husband said. The three of them held hands and prayed. She and the husband sat at opposite ends of the table and the boy in a seat between them. He was on a borrowed chair and it squeaked when he inched forwards to cut his food. It was strange cuisine he was not used to eating. Dry and unidentifiable. The boy ate it merrily but eyed him with caution every time he glanced up from his plate.

What do you do for work? The husband asked halfway through. He poured wine into his mother’s glass but did not offer the boy or John anything to drink.

I was a farmhand up in Mexico. He sat straight in his chair. Like to own my own ranch one day.

Oh. The husband said. You’ve finished school then?

No I left for Mexico with nearly a year left. His mother gently wiped James’ face with a cloth napkin.

Perhaps you should. The husband said. I think there are places you can go if you wished. 

I dont think I will.

Well, the husband said and that was that.

He left not long after. They did not invite him to stay the night. They were going to the theatre and taking the boy with them to see friends of theirs in a Puccini play. The car exhaust coughed fumes into the horse's mouth as they left.

***  
John rode on. He rode through San Antonio and stopped to rest in a farmer’s field. He rode through familiar thickets of dead and dying cacti and finally past the Rawlins place and the old schoolyard. 

The Grady ranch was locked when he came there but he knew from years of practice that if you kicked at the lock enough it would open. Finally it did and he walked in. The front door was crooked and half open so he did not have to touch it as he walked in.

The kitchen was dust covered and there were cobwebs hanging from the cabinets. His grandfathers chair at the dinner table was overturned probably by a pack of adventurous children from the city. There were stray bottles of wine in the corner of the living room. One of them was leaking blood red onto the carpet and he righted it before going upstairs.

His old bedroom was untouched. It was the same as the day he’d left it. His old saddle the one from before his father sat worn in the closet. There was a pack of cigarettes laying on his end table and he shook one loose. Something overtook him and he scrambled in his pockets for a lighter with a sort of frenzy he had only last felt in Satillo all those years back. It was the sort of urgency that came when faced with the choice of whether to die or stay alive. He was choosing to kill now.

The building caught aflame easily. He was almost shocked when he caught his darkened reflection on a shattered piece of glass. The walls curled inwards on themselves and he slowly walked backwards down the familliar steps. He wandered once through his grandfather’s office and then returned outdoors. By now the upstairs was beginning to smoke and he thought he should feel guilty but did not. Instead he felt like some sort of merciful god or benevolent vet taking the dying dog out behind the barn to shoot. It was not his to have. It was not anyone's to have any longer and it was in a state of constant and perpetual misery.

He trotted slowly off the land his father’s fathers had lived and died for and on and watched the smoke burn sweet in the air. Something in him had changed. His soul had been altered. In silence, he rode away from the red embers of his American dream and back to San Angelo as the sun set hot and hellish as a free man.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you want to comment PLEASE do! I love discussing Pretty Horses. Or even just tell me about your day. Lockdown is lonely, y'all. <3


End file.
